Towns and high streets across Tatton are full of amazing businesses. They have shown incredible resilience over the last few years (especially through lockdown), but there is a limit to that resilience when this Labour government keeps piling on the taxes and cost increases.
They have faced huge increases in staffing costs because of rises to employer national insurance contributions and increases to the minimum wage. They have dealt with soaring gas and electricity prices – which are about to get worse, given the Middle East conflict. And next month they will face a further increase in the minimum wage and paying staff statutory sick pay from the first day of absence, but the biggest challenge and what many fear will be the final nail in the coffin, comes through exorbitant hikes in business rates.
Last week I met with yet more business owners wondering how they will cope with these soaring costs. Some were in tears with the pressure they are under.
One business owner in Wilmslow told me she expects her business rates to increase by 60.8 per cent, an additional £18,208 per year (phased over three years) based on an uplift in the rateable value, the removal of hospitality relief and the application of the new multiplier in its place. This cost is on top of a recent 65 per cent increase in her rent. This is just one business; my inbox is full of examples from businesses in every part of the constituency who fear the future.
Another from Knutsford told me that across hospitality and leisure, businesses are pulling back, freezing investment, cutting hours, and stepping away from training young people, not because of poor management, but because the cost base has become too heavy.
If our businesses close, jobs are lost and unemployment queues will soar along with the benefits bill.
This government’s attack on businesses is not only malicious but complete economic illiteracy.
As your MP I will keep fighting for our businesses. At the start of this year, I wrote to the government ministers setting out specific concerns from three of our local businesses, from different sectors. I am extremely disappointed to say that (despite responses usually coming within 28 days), I am still waiting. My office has repeatedly chased an answer. Perhaps, government wants to ignore how its actions could spell the end of businesses and our high streets, I do not know. What I do know is our businesses deserve better than to be treated with such contempt and I will keep shouting about this until government sit up and realise how devastating its actions will be.
